The New Universal Stiffener™

Fast Rivet Assembly For PCB Stiffeners

Compufab developed The New Universal Stiffener™ which does all the things a printed circuit board stiffener should do, with the added advantage of time saving rivet assembly.  These PCB stiffeners are designed specifically to use Avdel Textron Inc. Briv® 1800 series rivets.  The New Universal Stiffener™ fastens to a PCB with rivets anywhere along the length of the bar.

Large PCB's require a mechanical stiffener to reduce warp and bow when handling.  PCB stiffeners are a must to eliminate dangerous deflection due to vibration and bending and to assure good guidance of a PCB into its backplane connector.

The obvious construction for a PCB stiffener is a rectangular bar with drilled and tapped holes.  Most PCB stiffeners are just that, but drilling and tapping holes in a bar is expensive.  Assembling with screws is more time consuming.

Compufab has reduced this assembly time with the design of an ingenious bar shape as a PCB stiffener that will accept a rivet anywhere along its length.  Experience has shown that most existing PCB designs using board stiffeners can adopt this new PCB stiffener with no changes.  Check other advantages listed below which also may improve your design.

• Same bar will mount on PCB's with different hole locations.
• Eliminate close tolerances between mounting holes on PCB's.
• In most cases, this PCB stiffener will occupy less board precious real estate.
• Can be mounted over insulated spacers to clear copper traces or wire adds.
• Can be anodized different colors for coding.
• Ideal PCB label area, when used on rear edge of the PCB.
• Strong and light-weight.
• Clean, professional appearance.
• Rivet mounting reduces assembly time.
• Can also be used as a heat sink, power busbar or ground busbar.

The Universal Printed Circuit Board Stiffener system has been operated and tested under severe vibration conditions.

 Dimensions and hardware information.